Mike “Mish” Shedlock has repeatedly pointed out that we have reached “peak credit” – and there will not in our lifetimes be as much credit as we saw from 2000-2008. I noted last year: Michael Hudson is a highly-regarded economist.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) – Jill Stein’s bid to recount votes in Pennsylvania was in trouble even before a federal judge shot it down Dec. 12. That’s because the Green Party candidate’s effort stood almost no chance of detecting potential fraud or error in the vote – there was basically nothing to recount.

This editorial has been updated to reflect news developments. In late 2014, Senate Democrats delivered to a handful of federal agencies copies of a 6,700-page classified report about the secret prison network the Central Intelligence Agency established after the Sept. 11 attacks.

JERUSALEM Israel will re-assess its ties with the United Nations following the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

US senators have labeled “the hedge-fund model of drug pricing” employed by the likes of Turing Pharmaceuticals, formerly run by Martin Shkreli, as “predatory” and “immoral” in a newly released report on drug companies’ price hikes. The 131-page report – “Sudden Price Spikes in Off- Patent Prescription Drugs: The Monopoly Business Model that Harms Patients, Taxpayers, and the U.S.

Even though the influence-peddling revealed in the documents dates back nearly 50 years, more recent reports show that the food industry has continued to influence nutrition science. Last year, an article in The New York Times revealed that Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, had provided millions of dollars in funding to researchers who sought to play down the link between sugary drinks and obesity.

Bloomberg 12/17/2016 Tom Randall There’s a transformation happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. There have been isolated projects in the past where this happened: An especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs.

Facebook is adding a new feature wherein a group that the Washington Post calls an ‘independent third party fact checker’ will decide whether stories are real or fake, and flag ones the group decides are fake.

While anonymous CIA officials have told the media that they know for sure that Russia hacked Democratic party emails and gave them to Wikileaks, the CIA and other American intelligence agencies are refusing to brief Congress in their official capacities at this time.

EL PINAL/CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela Protests and looting broke out in parts of Venezuela on Friday due to a lack of cash after the socialist government suddenly pulled the nation’s largest banknote from circulation in the midst of a brutal economic crisis.

US government “propagandists” push for a foreign policy of “intervening around the world,” former presidential candidate and founder of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Dr. Ron Paul, told RT in a wide-ranging interview that also touched on Syria.

After years of federal estimates of police killings that observers have called incomplete, the Bureau of Justice Statistics says that about two-thirds of 1,900 deaths during arrests over a year period can be considered homicide.

The chairman of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has slammed the CIA’s refusal to brief Congress on allegations of Russian hacking. ” It is disappointing that the CIA would provide information on this issue to the Washington Post and NBC but will not provide information to elected members of Congress,” Homeland Security Chairman Senator Ron Johnson said on Friday.

A French journalist created a stir on Twitter after launching an open poll which asks if people think the media lies. At least 91 percent of the respondents said ‘yes,’ adding that the media hides information, and even comparing journalism to prostitution.

One in six U.S. adults reported taking a psychiatric drug, such as an antidepressant or a sedative, in 2013, a new study found. The new data comes from an analysis of the 2013 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which gathered information on the cost and use of health care in the United States.

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War The ongoing battle between independent, alternative media and legacy corporate-government sponsored propaganda media is in full swing following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.

]]>Why we are not as rational as we think, and why that mattershttp://fenello.com/oldnews/tranzitioning/?p=3973
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We like to think of ourselves as special because we can reason and we like to think that this ability expresses the essence of what it is to be human. In many ways this belief has formed our civilization; throughout history, we have used supposed differences in rationality to justify moral and political distinctions between different races, genders, and species, as well as between “healthy” and “diseased” individuals.

Those who wished to read the full text of the notorious Senate report on documenting the CIA torture of detainees after 9/11 will have to wait for 12 years. The White House ordered it kept under seal after Barack Obama leaves office.

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Speaking to RT on the advance of ISIS militants from Mosul toward Palmyra, Virginia Senator Richard Black (R) expressed doubt that the US-led coalition could have overlooked such a regrouping, pointing to possible interests of the US and regional players.

American lawmakers have introduced a so-called Stop Arming Terrorists Act that aims to protect US taxpayers’ dollars from being spent on supporting and arming international terrorist groups through covert operations and third states. Introduced to the House on Thursday by Democrat Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, the legislature aims to put an end to the widely-reported US practice of indirectly sponsoring terrorism.